The Last Class—The Story of a Little Alsatian -3rd Part-

“Your parents have not been careful enough to see that you were educated. They preferred to send you to work in the fields or in the factories, in order to have a few more sous. And have I nothing to reproach myself for? Have I not often made you water my garden instead of studying? And when I wanted to go fishing for trout, have I ever hesitated to dismiss you?”

Then, passing from one thing to another, Monsieur Hamel began to talk to us about the French

language, saying that it was the most beautiful language in the world, the most clear, the most

substantial; that we must always retain it among ourselves, and never forget it, because when a people

falls into servitude, “so long as it clings to its language, it is as if it held the key to its prison.” 1 Then he took the grammer and read us our lesson. I was amazed to see how readily I understood. Everything that he said seemed so easy to me, so easy. I believed, too, that I had never listened so closely, and that he, for his part, had never been so patient with his explanations. One would have said that, before going away, the poor man desired to give us all his knowledge, to force it all into our heads at a single blow.

When the lesson was at an end, we passed to writing. For that day Monsieur Hamel had prepared some entirely new examples, on which was written in a fine, round hand: “France, Alsace, France, Alsace.”

They were like little flags, waving all about the class, hanging from the rods of our desks. You should

have seen how hard we all worked and how silent it was! Nothing could be heard save the grinding of the pens over the paper. At one time some cock-chafers flew in; but no one paid any attention to them, not even the little fellows who were struggling with their straight lines, with a will and conscientious application, as if even the lines were French. On the roof of the schoolhouse, pigeons cooed in low tones, and I said to myself as I listened to them:

“I wonder if they are going to compel them to sing in German too!”

From time to time, when I raised my eyes from my paper. I saw Monsieur Hamel sitting motionless in his chair and staring at the objects about him as if he wished to carry away in his glance the whole of his little schoolhouse. Think of it! For forty years he had been there in the same place, with his yard in front of him and his class just as it was! But the benches and desks were polished and rubbed by use; the walnuts in the yard had grown, and the hop-vine which he himself had planted now festooned the windows even to the roof. What a heart-rending thing it must have been for that poor man to leave all those things, and to hear his sister walking back and forth in the room overhead, packing their trunks! For they were to go away the next day—to leave the province forever.

However, he had the courage to keep the class to the end. After the writing, we had the lesson in

history; then the little ones sang all together the ba, be, bi, bo, bu. Yonder, at the back of the room, old

Hauser had put on his spectacles, and, holding his spelling-book in both hands, he spelled out the letters with them. I could see that he too was applying himself. His voice shook with emotion, and it was so funny to hear him, that we all longed to laugh and to cry. Ah! I shall remember that last class.

Suddenly the church clock struck twelve, then the Angelus rang. At the same moment, the bugles of the Prussians returning from drill blared under our windows. Monsieur Hamel rose, pale as death, from his chair. Never had he seemed to me so tall.

“My friends,” he said, “my friends, I—I—”

But something suffocated him. He could not finish the sentence.

Thereupon he turned to the blackboard, took a piece of chalk, and, bearing on with all his might, he

wrote in the largest letters he could:

“VIVE LA FRANCE!”

Then he stood there, with his head resting against the wall, and without speaking, he motioned to us

with his hand:

“That is all; go.”

Read more »

The Last Class—The Story of a Little Alsatian -2nd Part-

While I was wondering at all this, Monsieur Hamel had mounted his platform, and in the same gentle

and serious voice with which he had welcomed me, he said to us:

“My children, this is the last time that I shall teach you. Orders have come from Berlin to teach nothing but German in the schools of Alsace and Lorraine. The new teacher arrives to-morrow. This is the last class in French, so I beg you to be very attentive.”

Those few words overwhelmed me. Ah! the villains! that was what they had posted at the mayor’s

office.

My last class in French!

And I barely knew how to write! So I should never learn! I must stop short where I was! How angry I

was with myself because of the time I had wasted, the lessons I had missed, running about after nests, or sliding on the Saar! My books, which only a moment before I thought so tiresome, so heavy to

carry—my grammar, my sacred history—seemed to me now like old friends, from whom I should be

terribly grieved to part. And it was the same about Monsieur Hamel. The thought that he was going

away, that I should never see him again, made me forget the punishments, the blows with the ruler.

Poor man! It was in honour of that last lesson that he had put on his fine Sunday clothes; and I

understood now why those old fellows from the village were sitting at the end of the room. It seemed to mean that they regretted not having come oftener to the school. It was also a way of thanking our teacher for his forty years of faithful service, and of paying their respects to the fatherland which was vanishing.

I was at that point in my reflections, when I heard my name called. It was my turn to recite. What would I not have given to be able to say from beginning to end that famous rule about participles, in a loud, distinct voice, without a slip! But I got mixed up at the first words, and I stood there swaying against my bench, with a full heart, afraid to raise my head. I heard Monsieur Hamel speaking to me:

“I will not scold you, my little Frantz; you must be punished enough; that is the way it goes; every day we say to ourselves: ‘Pshaw! I have time enough. I will learn to-morrow.’ And then you see what

happens. Ah! it has been the great misfortune of our Alsace always to postpone its lessons until

to-morrow. Now those people are entitled to say to us: ‘What! you claim to be French, and you can

neither speak nor write your language!’ In all this, my poor Frantz, you are not the guiltiest one. We all have our fair share of reproaches to address to ourselves.

Read more »

The Last Class—The Story of a Little Alsatian -1st Part-

I WAS very late for school that morning, and I was terribly afraid of being scolded, especially as

Monsieur Hamel had told us that he should examine us on participles, and I did not know the first thing about them. For a moment I thought of staying away from school and wandering about the fields.
 It was such a warm, lovely day. I could hear the blackbirds whistling on the edge of the wood, and in the Rippert field, behind the sawmill, the Prussians going through their drill. All that was much more

tempting to me than the rules concerning participles; but I had the strength to resist, and I ran as fast as I could to school.

As I passed the mayor’s office, I saw that there were people gathered about the little board on which

notices were posted. For two years all our bad news had come from that board—battles lost,

conscriptions, orders from headquarters; and I thought without stopping:

“What can it be now?”

Then, as I ran across the square, Wachter the blacksmith, who stood there with his apprentice, reading

the placard, called out to me:

“Don’t hurry so, my boy; you’ll get to your school soon enough!”

I thought that he was making fun of me, and I ran into Monsieur Hamel’s little yard all out of breath.

Usually, at the beginning of school, there was a great uproar which could be heard in the street, desks

opening and closing, lessons repeated aloud in unison, with our ears stuffed in order to learn quicker, and the teacher’s stout ruler beating on the desk:

“A little more quiet!”

I counted on all this noise to reach my bench unnoticed; but as it happened, that day everything was

quiet, like a Sunday morning. Through the open window I saw my comrades already in their places, and Monsieur Hamel walking back and forth with the terrible iron ruler under his arm. I had no open the door and enter, in the midst of that perfect silence.
 You can imagine whether I blushed and whether I was afraid!

But no! Monsieur Hamel looked at me with no sign of anger and said very gently:

“Go at once to your seat, my little Frantz; we were going to begin without you.”

I stepped over the bench and sat down at once at my desk. Not until then, when I had partly recovered

from my fright, did I notice that our teacher had on his handsome blue coat, his plaited ruff, and the black silk embroidered breeches, which he wore only on days of inspection or of distribution of prizes.

Moreover, there was something extraordinary, something solemn about the whole class. But what

surprised me most was to see at the back of the room, on the benches which were usually empty, some people from the village sitting, as silent as we were: old Hauser with his three-cornered hat, the

ex-mayor, the ex-postman, and others besides. They all seemed depressed; and Hauser had brought an

old spelling-book with gnawed edges, which he held wide-open on his knee, with his great spectacles

askew.

Read more »

The Siege of Berlin - 4th Part

“Meanwhile the siege went on—not the siege of Berlin, alas! It was the time of intense cold, of the

bombardment, of epidemics and of famine. But, thanks to our care, to our efforts, to the unwearying

affection which multiplied itself about him, the old man’s serenity was not disturbed for an instant. To

the very end I was able to obtain white bread and fresh meat for him. There was none for anybody but

him, to be sure; and you can imagine nothing more touching than those breakfasts of the grandfather, so innocently selfish—the old man seated on his bed, fresh and smiling, with a napkin at his chin, and his granddaughter beside him, a little pale because of privations, guiding his hand, helping him to drink, and to eat all those forbidden good things.

Then, enlivened by the repast, in the comfort of his warm room,

the winter wind whistling outside and the snow eddying about his windows, the ex-cuirassier would

recall his campaigns in the north and would describe to us for the hundredth time that terrible retreat

from Russia, when they had nothing to eat but frozen biscuit and horseflesh.

“‘Do you understand that, my love? We had horseflesh!’

“I rather think that she did understand it. For two months she had had nothing else. From that day,

however, as the period of convalescence drew near, our task about the patient became more difficult.

That numbness of all his senses, of all his members, which had served us so well hitherto, began to

disappear. Two or three times, the terrible volleys from Porte Maillot had made him jump, with his ears pricked up like a hunting-dog; we were obliged to invent a final victory of Bazaine under the walls of Berlin, and guns fired in his honour at the Invalides. Another day when his bed had been moved to the window—it was, I believe, the Thursday of Buzenval—he saw large numbers of National Guards collected on Avenue de la Grande Armée.

“‘What are all those troops?’ asked the good man; and we heard him mutter between his teeth:

“‘Poorly set up! Poorly set up!’

“That was all; but we understood that we must take great precautions thenceforth. Unluckily we did not take enough.

“One evening when I arrived, the girl came to me in great trouble.

“‘They are to march into the city to-morrow,’ she said.

“Was the grandfather’s door open? In truth, on thinking it over afterwards, I remembered that his face

wore an extraordinary expression that night. It is probable that he had overheard us. But we were talking of the Prussians; and the good man was thinking of the French, of that triumphal entry which he had been awaiting so long—MacMahon marching down the avenue amid flowers and flourishes of trumpets, his son beside him, and he, the old colonel, on his balcony, in full uniform as at Lutzen, saluting the torn flags and the eagles blackened by powder.

“Poor Father Jouve! He had imagined doubtless that we intended to prevent him from witnessing that

parade of our troops, in order to avoid too great excitement. So he was very careful not to mention it to any one; but the next day, at the very hour when the Prussian battalions entered hesitatingly upon the long road which leads from Porte Maillot to the Tuileries, the window up there opened softly, and the colonel appeared on the balcony, with his helmet, his long sword, all the glorious old array of one of Milhaud’s cuirassiers. I wonder still what effort of the will, what sudden outburst of life had placed him thus upon his feet and in his harness. This much is sure, that he was there, standing behind the rail, amazed to find the broad avenues so silent, the blinds of the houses closed, Paris as gloomy as a huge lazaretto, flags everywhere, but such strange flags, white with little crosses, and no one to go to meet our soldiers.

“For a moment he might have thought that he was mistaken.

“But no! Yonder, behind the Arc de Triomphe, there was a confused rumbling, a black line approaching in the rising sunlight. Then, little by little, the points of the helmets gleamed, the little drums of Jena began to beat, and beneath the Arc de Triomphe, while the heavy tramp of the regiments and the clashing of the sabres beat time, Schubert’s Triumphal March burst forth!

“Thereupon in the deathlike silence of the square, a cry rang out, a terrible cry: ‘To arms! To arms! The Prussians!’ and the four uhlans of the vanguard saw up yonder, on the balcony, a tall old man wave his arms, stagger, and fall. That time, Colonel Jouve was really dead.”

Read more »

The Siege of Berlin - 3rd Part

 He could not see our unfortunate Paris, all in confusion and dreadful to behold. What he saw from his bed was a section of the Arc de Triomphe, and in his room, about him, a collection of bric-a-brac of the First Empire, well adapted to maintain his illusion. Portraits of marshals, engravings of battles, the King of Rome in a baby’s dress, tall consoles adorned with copper

trophies, laden with imperial relics, medals, bronzes, a miniature of St. Helena, under a globe, pictures representing the same lady all becurled, in a ball-dress of yellow, with leg-of-mutton sleeves and bright eyes;—and all these things: consoles, King of Rome, marshals, yellow ladies, with the high-necked, short-waisted dresses, the bestarched stiffness, which was the charm of 1806. Gallant colonel! It was that atmosphere of victories and conquests, even more than anything we could say to him, that made him believe so innocently in the siege of Berlin.

“From that day our military operations were much simplified. To take Berlin was only a matter of

patience. From time to time, when the old man was too much bored, we would read him a letter from his son—an imaginary letter, of course, for nothing was allowed to enter Paris, and since Sedan,

MacMahon’s aide-de-camp had been sent to a German fortress. You can imagine the despair of that poor child, without news from her father, knowing that he was a prisoner, in need of everything, perhaps sick, and she obliged to represent him as writing joyful letters, a little short, perhaps, but such as a soldier on the field might be expected to write, always marching forward through a conquered country.

 Sometimes her strength gave way; then they were without news for weeks. But the old man became anxious, could not sleep. Thereupon a letter from Germany would speedily arrive, which she would bring to his bedside and read joyously, forcing back her tears. The colonel would listen religiously, smile with a knowing air, approve, criticise, and explain to us the passages that seemed a little confused. But where he was especially grand was in the replies that he sent to his son. ‘Never forget that you are a Frenchman,’ he would say to him. ‘Be generous to those poor people. Don’t make the invasion too hard for them.’ And there were recommendations without end, admirable preachments upon respect for the proprieties, the courtesy which should be shown to the ladies, a complete code of military honour for the use of conquerors. He interspersed also some general considerations upon politics, the conditions of peace to be imposed upon the vanquished. Thereupon I must say that he was not exacting.

“‘A war indemnity, and nothing more. What is the use of taking their provinces? Is it possible to turn

Germany into France?’ “He dictated this in a firm voice; and one was conscious of such candour in his words, of such a noble, patriotic faith, that it was impossible not to be moved while listening to him.

Read more »

The Siege of Berlin - 2nd Part

“When I left the room, the girl was waiting for me at the door, pale as death. She was sobbing.

“‘But he is saved!’ I said, taking her hands.

“The unhappy child hardly had the courage to reply. The true report of Reichshofen had been placarded; MacMahon in retreat, the whole army crushed. We gazed at each other in consternation. She was in despair, thinking of her father. I trembled, thinking of the old man. He certainly could not stand this fresh shock. And yet what were we to do? Leave him his joy, and the illusions which had revived him? But in that case we must lie.

“‘Very well, I will lie!’ said the heroic girl, quickly wiping away her tears; and with radiant face she

entered her grandfather’s chamber.

“It was a hard task that she had undertaken. The first few days she had no great difficulty. The good

man’s brain was feeble, and he allowed himself to be deceived like a child. But with returning health his ideas became clearer. We had to keep him posted concerning the movement of the armies, to draw up military bulletins for him. Really, it was pitiful to see that lovely child leaning night and day over her map of Germany, pinning little flags upon it, and struggling to lay out a glorious campaign: Bazaine besieging Berlin, Froissart in Bavaria, MacMahon on the Baltic. For all this she asked my advice, and I assisted her as well as I could; but it was the grandfather who was especially useful to us in that imaginary invasion. He had conquered Germany so many times under the First Empire! He knew all the strokes beforehand: ‘Now this is where they will go. 

Now this is what they will do’; and his anticipations were
always realised, which did not fail to make him very proud.

“Unlucky it was of no avail for us to take cities  and win battles; we never went quickly enough for him.

That old man was insatiable! Every day, when I arrived, I learned of some new military exploit.

“‘Doctor, we have taken Mayence,’ the girl would say to me, coming to meet me with a heart-broken

smile, and I would hear through the door a joyous voice shouting to me:

“‘They are getting on! They are getting on! In a week we shall be in Berlin!’

“At that moment the Prussians were only a week’s march from Paris. We asked ourselves at first if it

would be better to take him into the provinces; but as soon as we were outside the city, the state of the

country would have told him everything, and I considered him still too weak, too much benumbed by his great shock, to let him know the truth. So we decided to remain.

“The first day of the investment of Paris, I went up to their rooms, I remember, deeply moved, with that agony at the heart which the closed gates, the fighting under the walls, and our suburbs turned into frontiers, gave us all. I found the good man seated on his bed, proud and jubilant.

“‘Well,’ he said, ‘so the siege has begun!’ “I gazed at him in blank amazement.

“‘What, colonel! you know?’

“His granddaughter turned towards me:

“‘Why, yes, doctor, that’s the great news. The siege of Berlin has begun.’

“As she said this, she plied her needle with such a sedate and placid air! How could he have suspected

anything? He could not hear the guns of the forts.

Read more »

The Siege of Berlin - 1st part

WE were going up Avenue des Champs-Elysées with Dr. V——, asking the shell-riddled walls, and the sidewalks torn up by grape-shot, for the story of the siege of Paris, when, just before we reached the Rond-point de l’Etoile, the doctor stopped and, pointing to one of the great corner houses so proudly grouped about the Arc de Triomphe, said to me:

“Do you see those four closed windows up there on that balcony? In the early days of August, that

terrible August of last year, so heavily laden with storms and disasters, I was called there to see a case of apoplexy. It was the apartment of Colonel Jouve, a cuirassier of the First Empire, an old enthusiast on the subject of glory and patriotism, who had come to live on the Champs-Élysées, in an apartment with a balcony, at the outbreak of the war. Guess why? In order to witness the triumphant return of our troops.

Poor old fellow! The news of Wissembourg reached him just as he was leaving the table. When he read the name of Napoleon at the foot of that bulletin of defeat, he fell like a log.

“I found the former cuirassier stretched out at full length on the carpet, his face covered with blood, and as lifeless as if he had received a blow on the head from a poleaxe. He must have been very tall when he was standing; lying there, he looked enormous. Handsome features, magnificent teeth, a fleece of curly white hair, eighty years with the appearance of sixty. Beside him was his granddaughter, on her knees

and bathed in tears. She looked like him. One who saw them side by side might have taken them for two beautiful Greek medallions, struck from the same die, one of which was old and earth-coloured, a little roughened on the edges, the other resplendent and clean-cut, in all the brilliancy and smoothness of a fresh impression.

“The child’s grief touched me. Daughter and granddaughter of soldiers, her father was on MacMahon’s staff, and the image of that tall old man stretched out before her evoked in her mind another image no less terrible. I comforted her as best I could, but in reality I had little hope. We had to do with a case of complete paralysis on one side, and at eighty years of age few people recover from it.
For three days the patient lay in the same state of inanition and stupor. Then the news of Reichshofen reached Paris. You remember in what a strange way it came. Up to the evening, we all believed in a great victory, twenty thousand Prussians killed and the Prince Royal a prisoner. I know not by what miracle, what magnetic current, an echo of that national rejoicing sought out our poor deaf-mute in the depths of his paralysis;

but the fact is that on that evening, when I approached his bed, I did not find the same man there. His eye was almost clear, his tongue less heavy. He had the strength to smile at me, and he stammered twice:

“‘Vic-to-ry!’ “And as I gave him details of the grand exploit of MacMahon, I saw that his features relaxed and his

face lighted up.

Read more »

SEQUENCE And THE WORLD

SEQUENCE

To sleep, with the moon in one eye

and the sun in the other,

Love in your mouth,

a lovely bird in your hair,

Adorned like the fields,

the woods, the routes, the sea,

around the whole world so lovely and adorned.

Flee across the landscape

Through branches of smoke and all the fruits of the wind,

Stone legs with sand stockings,

Held by the waist, all the river's muscles,

And the last concern on a face transformed.

THE WORD

I am fortunate: mine is an easy beauty.

I slide over the roof of the winds,

I slide over the roof of the seas

I'm sentimental these days

I no longer know who's in charge

I no longer move silk over ice

I am ill, laughter and pebbles

I nakedly love whatever is most Chinese

I love what's most naked the darting of birds

I am old but here I'm beautiful

And the shadow coming down from the depths of the windows

Every evening spares the dark heart of my eyes.

Read more »

INVENTION: All transformations are possible

The right hand lets sand slip through.

All transformations are possible.

Far off, the sun sharpens on the stones its haste to finish.

Describing the landscape matters little,

Just the pleasing length of a harvest.

For my two eyes a brightness

Like water and fire.

What is the role of the root?

Despair has severed all its links

Raising his hands to its head.

Seven, four, two, one,

In the street a hundred women

I won't see again.

The art of love, liberal art,

the art of dying well,

the art of thinking,

incoherent art, the art of smoking

the art of pleasure, medieval art,

decorative art, the art of reasoning,

the art of reasoning well,

the art of poetry, mechanical art,

erotic art, the art of being a grandfather,

the art of dancing, the art of seeing,

the art of charm, the art of the caress,

Japanese art, the art of playing,

the art of eating, the art of torturing.

But I've never found what I write in what I love.

Read more »

IN THE MIST 'poem

In the mist where glasses of water clatter against each other,

where snakes come looking for milk,

a monument of wool and silk disappears.

It is there that,

on the last night,

bringing their weakness,

all the women came in.

The world wasn't made for their ceaseless walking around,

their langorous gait,

their search for love.

Great country of bronze of the Belle Epoque,

along your paths in their gentle slope, disquiet has deserted.

We'll have to do without gestures sweeter than smell,

eyes brighter than power,

there will be cries, tears, swearing,

and the gnashing of teeth.

The men who lie down will no longer be any more

than the fathers of forgetting.

At their feet despair will have the lovely aspect

of victories with no tomorrow,

haloes we put on under the beautiful blue sky.

One day, they will be tired of it,

one day they will be angry, needles of fire,

masks of pitch and of mustard and women will rise,

with dangerous hands, with eyes of perdition,

with a devastated body, radiant in every movement.

And, the sun will flower once more,

like the mimosa.

Read more »

UNDER THE RED THREAT

Under the red threat of a sword,

undoing her hair,

which guides kisses and shows the spot where kisses rest,

she is laughing.

On her shoulder,

ennui has dozed off.

Ennui can only be itself with her,

the rash one,

who laughs madly as day's end

dispersing red suns beneath bridges, blue moons,

faded flowers of a blasé bouquet.

She is like a great wagon of wheat

and her hands germinate and stick out their tongues.

The roads that she tows in her wake are her pets

and she closes their eyes with her sovereign steps.

Read more »

GOSPEL SILENCE !!

We are sleeping with red angels

who show us the desert without small letters

and those sweet desolate awakenings.

We are sleeping.

A single wing destroys us, evasion,

we have wheels older than the feathers flown away and lost,

with which to explore the graveyards of slowness,

the only lust.

The bottle we surround with the bandages of our wounds

resists no longing.

Let's take the hearts, the brains,

the muscles of rage,

let's take the invisible flowers of the pale girls

and children joined together,

let's take the hand of memory,

let's close the eyes of recollection,

a theory of trees delivered by the thieves

strikes us and divides us, all the pieces are good.

Which will gather them up: terror, suffering, or disgust?

Let us sleep, my brothers.

The inexplicable chapter has become incomprehensible.

Giants go by exhaling terrible laments, gigantic laments,

laments of the kind the dawn wants to utter,

the dawn now no longer able to complain,

since then, my brothers, since then.

Read more »

IN THE CYLINDER OF TRIBULATIONS !!

Sweep me away, world, and I'll have memories.
Thirty girls with opaque bodies,

thirty girls who in the imagination are goddesses,
draw near the man at rest in the little valley of lunacy.
The man in question is gambling fervently.
He plays against himself and wins.
The thirty girls quickly tire of this.

Gambling's caresses are not those of love,
and the sight isn't nearly as charming, seductive, and agreeable.
I'm talking about thirty girls with opaque bodies
and one happy gambler.
There is also, in a city of wool and feathers,
a bird on the back of a sheep.

In fables, the sheep leads the bird to paradise.
There are also personified centuries,
the grandeur of present centuries,
the dizziness of forbidden years and lost fruits.
Sweep me away, memories,
and I'll have eyes as round as the world.

Read more »

A WOMAN IN LOVE ( love poems )

She is standing on my eyelids

And her hair mingles with mine,

She has the shape of my hands,

She has the color of my eyes,

She dissolves into my shadow

Like a stone against the sky.

Her eyes are always open

And she doesn't let me sleep.

Her dreams in daylight

Cause the suns to drift away,

Make me laugh, weep and laugh,

Speak when I have nothing to say.

Read more »

TO BE CAUGHT IN THE TRAP

It's a restaurant like any other.

Does that mean that I don't look like anyone else?

A tall woman beside me is beating eggs with her fingers.

A traveler places his clothes on a table and accosts me.

He's wrong.

I don't know any mystery. I don't even know the meaning of the word: mystery.

I have never looked for anything, never found anything, he's wrong to insist.

The storm which now and then comes out of the mist

turns my eyes and shoulders. Then space has doors and windows.

The traveler declares to me that I'm no longer the same.

No longer the same! I gather up the debris from all my marvels, this debris.

I throw them in the streams so lively, so full of birds.

The sea, the calm sea is between them like the sky in the light.

The colors too, if you speak to me about colors, I am not looking any more.

Speak to me of shapes, I have a real need of disquiet.

Tall woman, speak to me of shapes, or else I fall asleep and lead a remarkable life,

my hands caught in my head and my head in my mouth,

in my mouth well closed, an interior language.

Read more »